Appliances that provide customer solutions often need to integrate multiple hardware and software products. This integration requires the management of a number of system and administrative user accounts required by each individual product in the solution stack along with various access and connectivity requirements. For example, many database systems used in appliances require multiple internal user accounts to be created and maintained to allow the database system to function.
In a stand-alone environment, the customer will be responsible for creating and managing these user accounts. In more complex computer systems, many hardware and software products are integrated together and are not intended to be directly exposed to the end users. Therefore, a significant amount of work is required by administrators to ensure access and connectivity requirements are satisfied for each component of the system solution during setup, maintenance, and operation. This is further complicated by security policies which may mandate changes at various intervals. Further, root user accounts may be disabled in the system for security reasons, which makes operational tasks for internal user accounts much more complex.
Solution-based appliances such as storage archive appliances face the challenge of hiding these complex details from the end user and offering a secure, simplified, and unified way to manage each component or product that is used in the solution. However, the overall solution is often dependent on a plurality of subsystems, with each subsystem having associated user accounts that must comply with system policies. Automated techniques are needed to more efficiently manage internal user accounts used in a variety of systems and information solutions.